Tony-is La Conchita kind of near Carpenteria? Was he an older gentleman? (Ken) If so, yeah. He's a friend's dad who bought 4 off me a while ago (being a teacher, he hit me up at the right time...end of the month...teachers are paid monthly...so he got a great deal). He bought a 7 footer off you? That's awesome because, if it's the same guy, which it must be, he's a huge fan of tiki.

To carve yer very own tiki
Step 1-Contact a total stranger on another continent and ask for a full shot of the tiki you plan on trying to duplicate for a fellow tiki fan that bestowed kind words on you.
Step 2- Get to work. Draw a crummy sketch on the shorter than hoped for log (but the only one with the somewhat correct width to height dimensions)

Step 3- Get permission (by no verbal dissention) to take artistic liberties with the design of the tiki's derriere.

Here is the Lucky Tiki that was created for the Lucky Tiki Bar (Tiki Bob's new place) in L.A.. This was designed by Kevin Kidney. The design was a sort of neo-Marquesian based concept. I had never done anything like it and was happy to be challenged.
This is the blueprint I worked off of.

The base was simply 4 pieces of 4x4 laminated together, cut on a band saw, dadoed with a skill saw, routed out in the middle, and routed with a detail. Not a chisel was touched.

The body was a solid chunk of douglas fir from ridge beam fall off 6" x 12" x 36". I band sawed the basic shape, then carved the rest.

The natural grain on the butt was similar to the conscentric circles Kevin had designed on the prints, hence we were lucky.

The front of the body was equally as lucky since the grain followed one pattern all the way out.

The head became another issue. I cheated and called many moulding supply houses in search of a 9" sphere. No luck. Then I tried to turn the laminated layers on a good old Oliver lathe. No luck. Then I belt sanded and skill sawed it into as close to a sphere as humanly possible. Mediocre luck.
That was the stained body and the head before it was stained. There were a lot of stain issues on the head piece. It was primarily end grain so it absorbed more stain than the body and blah blah blah. Here are the final pictures of the finished project. Feel free to visit him at the bar.
I tried to fix some of the small photos and enlarge them. oops.